Robert Schrader Follow Facebook Twitter Robert has traveled to nearly 100 countries over the past decade, surveying all the weird, amazing, and wonderful things each has to offer along the way. Robert is the creator of the award-winning travel blog Leave Your Daily Hell and boasts several dozen digital and print bylines as well, most notably Business Insider, CNN Travel, The Huffington Post and the inflight magazines of Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways.Robert has been based in Asia since early 2017, and while he travels globally from his current home in Taiwan, he has a special affinity for the Far East. In May 2018 he launched Japan Starts Here, a comprehensive resource dedicated to the Land of the Rising Sun. Experience It was early 2014 when Robert began contributing to TripSavvy, which was then known as About.com. He was actually in the midst of his first trip to Japan when he came on as the "Weird & Amazing Travel" guide. This was fitting, since Japan is the epicenter of the weirdest and most amazing things on the planet.Five years earlier, during a brief stint teaching English in Shanghai, he'd launched Leave Your Daily Hell. Though it had originally been a means of communicating with his family and friends from behind China's "Great Firewall," the blog quickly grew in popularity, having reached around 100,000 unique visitors per month by the time Robert became part of the TripSavvy family.In order to build his blog's content and his own credibility as a travel expert, Robert has spent more than half his time on the road during the past decade. He's visited all six of the world's inhabited continents.Although Robert's primary focus has been monetizing his websites, he has also contributed to a wide range of publications. Early in his career he was a regular contributor to mainstream outlets such as CNN Travel (which was known as CNNGo at the time) and The Huffington Post. More recently, he's written for more specialized media, including a slew of in-flight magazines for top airlines and boutique publications throughout Asia, such as Singapore's luxury-focused World Travel Magazine.Robert has visited most of the major destinations on his bucket list, but some places remain, most notably Antarctica. He also hopes to embark on a more extensive trip of Africa, which he considers the most fascinating place on Earth. Education Robert earned a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Tampa in 2006. He is conversationally fluent in French, Spanish, and Thai, and has studied Chinese, German, and Japanese as well.Awards and PublicationsRobert is the creator of the travel blog Leave Your Daily Hell, which in 2015 was ranked #10 in the world according to visitor numbers from Google Analytics.Robert launched Japan Starts Here in May 2018 as a resource to inform—and inspire—any trip to Japan. About TripSavvy and Dotdash Meredith TripSavvy, a Dotdash Meredith brand, is a travel site written by real experts, not anonymous reviewers. You’ll find that our 20-year-strong library of more than 30,000 articles will make you a savvy traveler—showing you how to book a hotel the whole family will love, where to find the best bagel in New York City, and how to skip the lines at theme parks. We give you the confidence to spend your vacation actually vacationing, not fumbling with a guidebook or second-guessing yourself. Learn more about us and our editorial guidelines.